Recruiting The Best Coworking Team

CREC team

Your team is everything

Your team is everything: your community’s heart and the coworking business’s engine. Coworking is a young industry; consequently, there aren’t a lot of coworking professionals with experience in the labor market compared to other industries. In any case, if you have good knowledge of the needs of your business, we can help you to design, find and build the perfect coworking team.

When managing the space alone

If you start out as a small/medium coworking space, your team will likely be made up of only one person, the owner, who will be in charge of all business areas and will have to perform too many tasks.

To have an idea of all of the work that the space manager has to carry out, let’s structure the coworking company into four core areas: Operations, Business, Events, and Community. Operations related to logistics, space maintenance, and technology infrastructure. The business area takes care of sales, marketing, communication, and income and expenses. Events refer to all external events related to renting the space. Finally, the community takes care of members and all activities addressing them.

The space manager, just like Superman, has to be multi-skilled in order to successfully manage all business areas. Setting up collaboration agreements with some members will help him/her to minimize the workload. This kind of collaboration should be agreed on for specific tasks within a period of time, and it should, of course, be win-win, otherwise, it won’t work out.

When the community grows, one person isn’t enough. Now is the right time to look for the perfect coworking team.

Designing your perfect coworking team

When talking about Coworking spaces over 1000m2, a team is needed. The organisational chart will differ depending on the coworking business model.

Let’s take the above example: a coworking space with four areas: Operations, Business, Events, and Community. Let’s say that the facility is 2000m2. The perfect team in this scenario could be made up of four or five people, depending on the coworking model and needs: Managing Director, Marketing and Communications Manager, Operations Manager, Events Manager, and last but not least, Community Builder.

Once the organisational chart has been defined, we have to describe the roles and skills for each function:

Managing Director

Functions

  • People management
  • Financing
  • Business development and growth
  • Valuable partnerships

Skills

  • Leadership
  • Innovation
  • Persistence
  • Communication

Marketing and Communication Manager

Functions

  • Marketing and communication strategy
  • Services development
  • Sales
  • Website
  • Blog post
  • Social media
  • Offline communications
  • Design

Skills

  • Critical thinking
  • Creativity
  • Communication
  • Data/analytics skills

Operations Manager

Functions

  • Technical infrastructure (IT systems, security and access management systems)
  • Smart facility management and maintenance
  • Management of operational staff

Skills

  • Time management
  • Analytical
  • Problem-solving
  • Communication
  • Leadership

Event Manager

Functions

  • Event strategy
  • Event planning
  • Event logistics and execution

Skills

  • Organized
  • Flexibility
  • Time management

Community Builder

Functions

  • Responsible for hosting and stimulating the community
  • Customer service
  • Sales
  • Internal member communications
  • Community event planning
  • Community event execution

Skills

  • Connector
  • Communication
  • Sales
  • PR

Looking for the perfect coworking team

There are some online coworking channels where coworking operators interact to sharing news and knowledge. They are used as a tool to keep connected locally and globally and are listed below.

These are all good platforms where you can publish your job offer without paying. You can also post an offer on LinkedIn or other Job search platforms, but this is not a free service. Another good option is to take coworking advisory services, HWL for example, can help you to select and train your perfect coworking team.

Above all, the best place to find your team members will always be your coworking space. Your community members are the best potential candidates; they understand your business needs best because they know your philosophy, your community and how space works.

Finding the perfect coworking team could take some time but it’s easy. What isn’t easy is keeping and retaining team members. – Vanessa Sans, HWL.

Picture by Nicola Mesken for CREC Coworking

Coworking sells memberships and other complementary office services, which may or may not be included in the membership plan.